Mistakes, bugs and crashes

So in my ongoing playtesting, I've encountered another swag of mistakes and shortcomings, and solved a few issues that have been bugging me for a VERY long time to boot.

To give the highlights:

• Finally integrated a core sub-plot of the main story into the game properly. Previously I'd been able to go through it separately, but I hadn't done the work to integrate it into game seamlessly.
• Fixed a bunch of area transitions that weren't working exactly as desired.
• Repaired dialogue chain issues that could accidentally cause the story to jump forward by quite a bit.
• Completed and polished some scripting that allowed the player to properly complete some main quests, rather than just having them trigger automatically once enemies were dead. 
• Fixed up some issues relating to enemies not appearing, not going hostile or not fighting with other NPCs.
• Characters correctly repositioned after a cutscene; previously they simply didn't go where I wanted them to... because I wasn't calling the correct script.

There was also a bunch of smaller cosmetic stuff that I fixed as well. While I'm not focusing on those kind of issues quite so much at the moment, when I'm noticing them every time I do a playthrough and they're irritating me, it's very difficult NOT to address those problems, particularly when I know what they are. Making things prettier by increased the mesh density of terrain is one such problem. Getting rid of synth voice (when I actually possess line recordings) is another.

When I have time, I also like to make things sparkly

However, one of the BIG things I've been battling with recently is my computer.  I upgraded a few months ago, with a new motherboard, cpu and ram, but didn't do a full OS reinstall. That meant I had to be a bit dodgy in the way I upgraded my drivers to actually get Windows to boot; manually loading drivers via the command prompt works - but doesn't leave your PC in an optimal state.

I subsequently had one of the RAM sticks die, so I was dealing with borrowed RAM to keep my modding going. However, 4Gb of RAM given the horrible state my OS was in with the driver installation job meant that my computer simply wasn't happy and crashed a lot. (I now have 2 "abandons" in DOTA2 due to PC crashes, my guilty pleasure when I'm not modding)

I got sick of this and bought myself an SSD, and have spent many hours today trying to get my computer back and set up just the way I like it.  Hopefully the SSD should provide some speed improvements for my modding efforts (DAO received the privilege of being installed on the SSD), as should the general improved reliability of my computer.

As I type this, I just finished up installing the toolset and restored my database, so I should be good to go. The only disappointing news is that my Awakening disc is apparently quite scratched (I have no idea what from, it mostly just sits in my dvd drive...) and I can't actually install it due to the damage.  This shouldn't actually impact my modding, because I don't recall any Awakening resources appearing in the toolset anyway. Still, it's disappointing should I ever want to play Awakening again, because I can't. :(